THE STADE DE FRANCE WILL NOT BE A place for the faint-hearted on Wednesday, when the hosts will be looking to claim a significant payback for their disappointment in the World Cup final. While France started life after Zinédine Zidane with a 3-0 victory away to Georgia on Saturday, Italy, in their first competitive match since beating Raymond Domenech’s team on penalties in Germany, were held to an ignominious 1-1 draw by Lithuania in Naples. Should France make home advantage count in Wednesday’s group B match, Italy will be five points adrift in their bid to reach the 2008 European Championship finals.
Although the top two from each group qualify automatically for the tournament being co-hosted by Switzerland and Austria, Italy will be leaving themselves little margin for error. Scotland will add to the Italians’ discomfort if they beat Lithuania earlier on Wednesday.
Florent Malouda opened the scoring in Tbilisi before Louis Saha and Thierry Henry underlined France’s superiority. Patrick Vieira also had an effort disallowed as France played two strikers, with Saha partnering Henry in the absence of Zidane, and benefited from Claude Makelele and Lilian Thuram extending their returns from retirement.
Fabio Cannavaro denied that Italy were suffering a hangover from their World Cup heroics as almost 60,000 Italians were stunned when Tomas Danilevicius gave Lithuania the lead. Although Filippo Inzaghi equalised, Roberto Donadoni, the new Italy coach, could not devise a way past the humble visiting team.
“We weren’t brilliant, but I thought we played a good match considering many of our players have been playing only friendlies,” Cannavaro, the Italy captain, said. “They were better than us for the first ten minutes, then I think we played with great determination and created 15 good chances.”
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The Italian media, still reeling from the match-fixing scandal, were less sympathetic. “Wake up, here comes France,” Corriere dello Sport suggested.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer scored twice, his first international goals for three years, and Morten Gamst Pedersen once as Norway beat Hungary 4-1 in Budapest in group C, but it was a striker Manchester United could not sign who helped Spain to get their group F campaign off to an ideal start with a 4-0 win. Fernando Torres was joined on the scoresheet by David Villa, who scored twice, and Luis García.
Holland were less impressive as they scraped past Luxembourg 1-0 in group G, but Poland, in group A, were humbled 3-1 at home by Finland, for whom Jari Litmanen, the former Liverpool forward, scored twice.